Saving 'Grace' / Z Space director David Dower molds new work for the Magic / New play by Gary Leon Hill

RUTHE STEIN, CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, January 22, 1995

The Z Collective is something of a legend in local theater circles. Named for the Zuni Cafe -- where its founding members waited tables and tended bar -- the company became known as much for where it performed as for what it performed. A play about the horror of corporate life could be seen in a Financial District office tower; another, about AIDS, played in the lounge of an HIV research institute.

In 1993, after five peripatetic years, the Z Collective quietly disbanded. Members wanted to pursue other offers. With a stack of positive reviews and money in the bank, they decided to quit while they were ahead.

"We literally retired that name," said David Dower, who was the company's managing director. "Like the Beatles, the Z Collective will not come back."

However, the freewheeling spirit that infused it lives on at Z Space, a South-of-Market studio where playwrights can develop their work and have it read and critiqued by colleagues. Dower, 36, started the studio and is artistic director. Other former Z members pop up at readings. The studio has an artist-in-residence program and sponsors panels on issues of concern to the theater community.

POWERFUL MESSAGE OF FAMILY TIES

Dower, who is directing the production, heard a reading of "Say Grace" at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 1993 and was struck by the powerful message about family ties. Based on an experience of Hill's, the play is about an urban youth who goes to a Nebraska farm town to take care of his dying grandmother.

"He is trying to sort out the last 20 years of his life and figure out how he ended up nowhere. She is trying to sort out the last 70 years," Dower said. The grandmother is ready to die. "But she says there are a few things she has got to straighten out first."

It is a risky play for the Magic, not just because it is new, but also because "it isn't multicultural or left of center or a woman's play," Dower said -- unlike so much of what is shown in this politically correct time in the theater.

"This play is about white Protestant farm folks."

PLAYS WITH A 'HARD EDGE'

Hill's early plays, some of them produced in San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and at the prestigious Humana Festival in Louisville, were characterized by a "hard edge," Dower said. "The language is gritty."

By contrast, Hill wrote "Say Grace" "at a time when his heart was breaking," Dower said. The result is a gentler play that Dower predicts will get people in the audience thinking about their own family relationships. That was how he was affected, which was one reason that he was so eager to direct the play. When his own grandmother began her slow slide to death, Dower was living 3,000 miles away.

"I wasn't able to do what the character in the play did for his grandmother: to help her get through the anger she felt about the decay of her body and the condition of her life at the time she got sick," he said.

At the Z Space, Dower worked with Hill on making the work more accessible. Because it is such a personal journey, the two wanted to make sure that audiences didn't feel excluded.

FOCUSING THE PLAY

"The language and structure when we first started working on it was so intensely personal it was almost opaque," Dower recalled. "I have tried to help focus it. I told Gary early on that I'm never interested in theater that frustrates the audience."

One initial problem was the way the stories were juxtaposed. With 10 characters being played by five actors, it wasn't always possible to know who was telling the story. The time also shifts, from Nebraska in 1912, to San Francisco State University at the time of the 1968 riots, to the present.

John Balma, an original member of the Z Collective, plays two parts in "Say Grace": a character named Swain and Swain's brother-in-law. He acknowledged that his initial confusion about the play was exacerbated by the coincidence that actor Howard Swain plays another part in "Say Grace." "He does not play anyone named Swain," Balma said, laughing.

Dower and Hill worked together to rearrange the stories so it would always be clear who was talking. In an early version, the grandson and grandmother hadn't gotten together by intermission, which meant that audience had no idea where the play was going. Now they have a reunion in the first half "so the audience walks out knowing exactly where the journey is leading and comes back eager to see it resolved."

At the Z Collective as well as other companies where he has directed, Dower most often worked with plays that have been done elsewhere. In those instances, he imposed his vision on the play. "In effect, I created the production I wanted to see."

However, with a premiere such as "Say Grace," "My job is to facilitate the playwright's vision of what he has written."

NO EGO CLASHES

Working with Hill at the Z Space, where early rehearsals were conducted before moving to the Magic, was easy. There were no fights or ego clashes.

"It has been a real gift to me," Dower said. "I have worked on other premieres and the process isn't generally this mutually collaborative.

"Gary was concerned that this not be seen as 'that crazy Grace play.' He has a particular style of language that often leaves people out, that sometimes makes them want to leave the theater. It can be very confrontational. He wanted the audience to be comfortable with this experience, and that is what I've done."

"SAY GRACE"

The drama about family ties by Gary Leon Hill plays Tuesday through February 19 at the
Magic Theatre
, Building D at Fort Mason, Laguna Street and Marina Boulevard, San Francisco. Call (415) 441-8822.